Providing contemporary urban images

Imaging cities

Context

For many years, cities have been dealt with as if they were an incurable disease afflicting the planet and parasitizing the rural world. This view is on the wane. Cities are now being viewed as a positive development. The advantages of cities are emphasized. Cities are where the resources (schools, information, technology and goods and services) are mainly located. As the focal points of globalization, they are subject to rapid transformation and are where social actors can find the tools they need and forge ties for radical redevelopment.

This complex reassessment of cities reached a turning point at the Istanbul Summit on Human Settlements. The Summit marked the birth of an alliance between governments and cities to promote sustainable development as well as the provision of a common language, syntax and grammar of urban development in which cities are a key factor in global development, without thereby minimizing any of its problems and difficulties. The growth of civil society has accompanied the profound change cities are undergoing today. Neighbourhood councils, self-help groups, and the like have become key players in urban development.

Claim

1. Imagine a city without fear, a city whose streets can be walked freely by all, young and old, a city where landscapes offer relief from concrete and asphalt, a city with no homeless people, a city where water is available to all, rich and poor alike, a city where creativity and innovation flourish and where every citizen is allowed to exercise his or her rights freely. Now look around you. Is your city anything like the one you just imagined?< 2. A super city is an urban area that has three characteristics: (1) a population of more than one million people; (2) a sustainable capability for meeting the physical and social needs of its residents (food, shelter, safety, health, transportation and education); (3) a healthy and dynamic economic environment that creates, attracts and nurtures economic investments that produce adequate jobs and public revenues. Not all large cities are super cities, but all large cities should strive to achieve that status.